AS A YOUTH, I SPENT MANY WORKING HOURS in a grocery store. In one of those places, a small three register market in a mid-sized town, the meat manager was a guy named Frank who, one might guess by the way he acted, secretly wanted to be a cop. The meat department ran the length of the back of the store. A long, narrow one-way glass also ran the length of the back room where the meats were prepared, enabling Frank and his meat cutters to see the customers, while the customers had no idea they were being watched. Nobody but Frank ever really kept an eye on the customers. As he moved along the sawdust covered floor, peering through the one-way glass, Frank could actually see down each aisle. When he wasn’t cutting meat, he was surreptitiously spying on the customers, staring at pretty girls or looking for shoplifters. Whenever he spotted some customer who seemed suspicious to him for some reason, he would zero in on them, gearing himself up, his face taking on the look of a man on a mission. He had thick, dark brows and his eyes were too close together, as if by being further apart some secret would have been revealed. Whenever I saw Frank hovering around the registers, I knew that he had his eye on someone who was checking out, waiting to see whether or not they paid for everything he thought they had. Frank was both meat manager and store detective, the arm of justice wearing an apron stained with the blood of a recently cut couple of rib eye steaks. I always suspected that he liked his cooked well.
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Brings to mind my momma who advised "Someone is always watching."
In today's world, I would add someone or something (video cams) is always watching.
On a recent trip to Home Depot, I told my hubby I would wait in our vehicle for him. I was sitting there with my feet on the dash enjoying a beautiful sunny day and noticed a woman in the rearview mirror about 3 rows behind us adjusting her underoos after getting out of her car - and yes, momma was right - someone is ALWAYS watching!
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Hello HenryM.
Thanks for your story, as it put me in mind of younger days when my slightly older, identical twin brothers, first went to work in two different butcher's shops owned in the same chain.
They would come home in the evenings and share their experiences in depth. The reason for this communication was so that each knew what had happened to the other brother on the previous day. They thought it was hilarious that every day they would each attend the shop that the other twin had attended the previous day. The charade went on for months without either of the shop managers noticing the difference. Well, physically, there wasn't much difference, but my brother's would come home and share the incidents where the managers became impatient with one or the other of them because they had told or shown them something the previous day, and they seemingly had not remembered. Every time I think of butcher's shops it now bring this story back to mind.
Best wishes
Bill
Henry, I was laughing all the way through your story. I was a meat manager for Safeway Stores for 47 years. In AZ, Tenn, LA, and AR.
All of that is true and a whole lot more. I could write a book about my experiences. LOL. I remember the sawdust floors. Every time we changed it we sprinkled cinnamon on it. Always smelled fresh and clean, at least when we started the day. LOL. Thanks for bringing back some great memories for me.